Guide to create a new SMS campaign

SMS marketing is an easy method to reach your customers. But with only 160 characters available, every character matters.

This guide offers a step-by-step best-practice to creating an effective SMS campaign to maximize every interaction you have with your customers.

Before creating your first SMS campaign, please make sure to set up the SMS settings and auto-replies.

To do so, go to Settings->SMS Settings inside your Remarkety account. 

Planning the SMS campaign strategy

Before beginning to create the campaign itself, it is important to establish:

• The goal of the campaign.
  Are you planning to target a customer after s/he added item/s to his/her shopping cart?
  Are you looking to send order confirmation messages? 
• The targeted audience.
  Who do you want to receive this message? 
• The offer.
  Will a coupon be included?
  Do I need to include an upsell method? 

Once these points are addressed, you can begin creating your SMS campaign.

Create your SMS campaign

Follow these steps to create your first SMS campaign. 

*This use case example focuses on creating an Abandoned cart SMS campaign.*

Step 1: Setup and segmentation

Inside your Remarkety account, go to Automations->Create Automation. 

Once directed to the Automation type selection menu, click Create SMS under the relevant automation type block.

Like the email campaign editor, you will first need to set up the When to Send trigger, Who Will Get This Email (Segmentation), and Coupon (if applicable).

For a full glossary of our Segmentation filters, click here.

To learn more about coupons, click here.

Step 2: Design your campaign

Unlike the email design editor, the SMS editor is set up differently. The design stage is divided to 4 sections:

1. Select the SMS Sender (From number). You can choose the Send From number from the numbers you already set up, or create a new number by clicking on Manage Senders...

2. Add the SMS text/copy to the body of the message. 

The best SMS and MMS messages are concise. Make sure to follow these recommendations when writing your SMS copy:

• Do not use text abbreviations (unless it's in-line with your branding). While it may be tempting to abbreviate to decrease character count, it will make your business appear unprofessional and confusing. 
• Do not write in all capital letters. Don’t "yell" at your shoppers. 
• Use Short Sentences. Use short sentences so your recipients can skim over the message in the shortest amount of time.
• Make sure the offer is easily identified. If you’re including an offer (coupon) in your message, mention the offer early on and make your CTA as clear as possible. Additionally, as with any offer, using urgency or scarcity will drive conversions.

On the bottom of the text box, you can select if you like to Shorten the CTA link, the text alignment (Left-To-Right or Right-To-Left) and the dynamic tags you can include inside the message. For a full list of the available dynamic tags you can use in an SMS campaign, click here.

3.  Test. 

In this section, you can select a test subject to preview the display by choosing the phone number you would like to send the test SMS campaign to. 

4. Preview. 
In this section, you can view how the campaign will look like once sent to the customer. The dynamic data in the preview will be pulled from the contact information you selected as the test subject.

Step 3: Send your campaign

In this section, you can select to either activate the Automation campaign, run the campaign in TESTING mode, or Stop the campaign altogether. 

• Run campaign. Select the Run radio button and click Save & Close to activate the SMS campaign.  Once you do, SMS messages will be sent to contacts that fit the segmentation criteria you set up earlier.
  You can also select the time of day the SMS messages will be sent. 
• TESTING mode. Select the Run radio button and check the box next to the “Send all sms to (test mode)” message to activate testing mode. Setting the campaign in Testing mode will send all messages to the one number you added to the text box. 
• Stop. Selecting the Stop radio button to halt any messages from going out.
  

And that’s it! We recommend going back through your SMS campaign to check for typos, make sure your CTA is clear, and send yourself a preview text to ensure that your message looks as expected and your links are pointed in the right place before you publish the campaign.